taken 10 years ago, near to Patterdale, Cumbria, Great Britain

Attainment in Goldrill Beck

Like geographers, kayakers play games. In canoeing, "attainment" is a technical term for seeing how far upstream against the current you can get, using river features like eddies to avoid fighting directly up the current. In shallow rapids, it's often impossible to avoid a direct brute-force attack, which is the case here. If the water level is low, the rapid is shallow and you are scraping the bottom - if the water level is higher, the current is stronger. Either way, the furthest we have ever got up Goldrill Beck is to the little road bridge a kilometre or so south of Ullswater. Getting to this footbridge is usually fairly easy if you don't mind scratching the bottom of your boat - John here is in a borrowed boat (mine) and since he can see that I am already upstream of him he's confident that I won't mind him bashing on up this shallow bit. The problem is that there isn't enough water to get the paddles into ! This is probably a game better played in plastic whitewater kayaks, but Ullswater itself is a good place for sea kayaks, so that's what we brought.